EC view: USSR to talk at Geneva

March 16, 1983

By Compiled From Wire Service Dispatches With Analysis From Monitor Correspondents Around The World

Edited By Linda Feldmann

Brussels

The Soviet Union will get serious about negotiating a nuclear-arms reduction agreement with the United States now that the West German elections are over, foreign ministers from the European Community agreed.

West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, president of the EC Council of Ministers, told newsmen that ''observers'' had rightly predicted the Soviets ''were going to be reserved'' until the West German elections March 6, Monitor contributor Gary Yerkey reports.

But with the elections over, the Soviets see that the governing coalition led by the center-right Christian Democrats ''will abide by the common Western position,'' Mr. Genscher said. This is the view shared by all the EC foreign ministers, he added.

Before the elections in West Germany, senior government officials had publicly complained that the Soviet Union had interfered in the country's internal affairs. They claimed the Soviets were waging a propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the West German voter that a Christian Democratic victory would endanger world peace. The conservative party has come out strongly in support of the 1979 NATO decision calling for the deployment, beginning later this year, of 572 new US nuclear missiles in five West European countries, including West Germany, if the Geneva talks end in failure.